How Do I Find Peace Again

First, I want to thank you for writing your books and having the patience and perseverance to complete all of them and see them through to publishing. I began reading them when my daughter Allison was born with Noonan Syndrome. She was ill off and on and endured 7 surgeries in 9 years. I was desperate to understand why she had to endure such pain and hardship and what I had done, if anything, to possibly cause her to live the difficult life she was living.

When she was 9, she was running on the playground at school and died instantly from an arrhythmia. She had a contagious passion for life and made each moment fun. She sang and laughed while doing everything. Everyone seemed to be drawn to her. Even strangers would come up to her and want to talk to her and touch her. I have been contacted by people as far away as New York who had heard of a friend of a friend who knew Ally.

Since her passing, I find I have lost my passion for life. I have another daughter who is recovering from the trauma of losing her only sibling. I can’t help feeling that if I was diagnosed with a terminal illness, I would be relieved. I feel emotionally exhausted and I just want to move on from this part of my existence.

I know Ally is OK and I believe that I will see her again. It is almost as if while she was alive, I felt a direct connection to God. I could look at her and hold her and I felt this peaceful feeling that I believe came from her. I do believe that she was an angel.

I do not fear death and just want this pain to end. Living for 9 years with Ally, knowing in my heart that she was not going to live a full life, and then losing her so suddenly, has just drained me. I continue on, have gotten my teaching credential, and I try every day to reach the children I teach and help them be the best they can be. But something has changed in me.

Is there any way I can find that peaceful feeling again? I want to learn from Ally, and be the best I can be every day. I do not wish to end my own life, I just am longing for the feeling I had when my Ally was with me. I have dreamed of her twice since her death and both times I felt the connection again. Any words of wisdom? ~Cindee

Neale Responds:

My dear Cindee,

I can think of nothing more devastating to any person than the loss of a child. I completely understand your emotional response to this, and I experience enormous empathy when reading your letter. You are a brave and very strong woman to have continued on to obtain your teaching certificate and to create a life where you are around other children constantly, to say nothing of your other daughter, who is, in your words, still recovering from the trauma of losing her only sibling. I am sure that I do not need to tell you that this daughter needs you now more than ever, and that the children who look to you for care and guidance in the classroom every day are likewise depending on you at a very high level. So I see the unique situation in which life has placed you — and I honor you for holding that place with such courage.

The first thing I find myself wanting to do, Cindee, is recommend that you read (or re-read, as the case may be) my book Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends. This book will reconfirm for you everything that you already seem to know about your wonderful Ally — and perhaps much more that you may only have wondered about or suspected. Not the least of this information is the passage of that book having to do with the death of children. That passage tells us, Cindee, that…

“Death is very kind to children, because children rarely move into death holding all sorts of preconceived negative notions about what happens afterward. They are pure. They have only just come from the spiritual realm. They are not that far removed from the Core of Their Being. They have just emerged from The Essence. And so small children move through the first stages of death very quickly and return almost immediately into Mergence with The Essence.

“It should be said that children ‘grow up’ in the Afterlife. That is, they become fully aware and fully conscious of all that is going on, and of Ultimate Reality. They know why they came to the Earth and they know why they left as early as they did. If they feel complete with all of that, they will move on, in whatever form they choose. If they do not feel complete, they will have the same opportunity to ‘come back to life’ as any other soul. The process is the same for all souls, no matter what the age of their body when they leave the physical world.

“But now I should like to say something about the agenda of children who die at a very young age.

“Those souls who enter the body and leave the body within a very short period — children who die…at a very tender age — inevitably do so in service to the agenda of another, at a very high level… In some cases they are required to leave early in order to do that. This is never, however, a tragedy for that soul. They have agreed to leave early.

“Every soul who comes to the body to serve the agenda of others is an angel — and every child who has died very young has done so to bring a gift to another. That gift may not be understood for some time by parents and others who are, naturally, deeply grieving. But I promise you that as time goes by and healing occurs, the gift will be seen, it will be received, and the work of that little sweetheart — who could only be described as an angel — will have been accomplished.”

I know, Cindee, because you have told me so, that you already know that Ally was and is an angel. But I wonder if you have previously considered the rest of that passage from HOME WITH GOD. There is an agenda that Ally came here to serve, and it was not only her own. Or, to put this another way, her own agenda was to serve the agenda of others. These would include everyone whose life was touched by her…and you tell me that this was a great many people. I am not surprised. Yet have you considered the possibility that this included your own spiritual agenda, Cindee?

I know that, on the surface, that may be a difficult thing for a mother saddened by the death of her child to hear. But I believe that just below the surface of that challenging statement is a deep revelation of enormous value. I know that during the remainder of your years on Earth, Cindee, you will touch the lives of a great many people — and a great many of them, because of your chosen profession, will be children. Do you think this is an accident? I, Cindee, do not. I see in it a perfect design. And I believe that you will be a more compassionate, more caring, more sensitive, more understanding, more insightful, more wonderful-in-every-way guide for those children than they could ever have hoped to find at their schoolhouse…all because of the experience in life that you have had, and that your angel Ally has brought you to.

I am going to go further, Cindee. I am going to say that I believe that Ally and the souls of all those other children had it set up that way. That is, your wonderful child died for a reason much larger than you might ever have imagined: to prepare you to touch the lives of not just one child, but hundreds and hundreds of children, in a way which could only emerge from a heart that had been broken…and healed again, thus to know the true wonder and glory of life, of childhood, of Divinity Itself, and the worth of each and every soul. I believe every child in every classroom you ever enter from this day until the end of your life is waiting, Cindee, for you to give him or her that gift. I believe that your other daughter awaits your giving of that gift every time she folds herself into your arms. And I believe that when you hold her, you hold Ally, too. For Ally’s soul accompanies the soul of her sister into your arms, that her healing and joy may be yours, even as yours is her sister’s.

Is this too large a reality for you to embrace or comprehend, Cindee? I don’t think so, or you would never have written me. So go now, and celebrate Ally’s everlasting presence by honoring her soul’s intention, and yours. Shed not tears of sadness, but tears of joy, for as you bring lightness and happiness and the promise of tomorrow to all other children — and, indeed, to all people who enter your life — you bring them a piece of Ally…who, after all, was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, a piece of YOU.

God bless you, my friend, and thank you for writing to me. A part of me shall be with you always because of this exchange we have shared. Know that God sends you strength and wisdom in unending abundance.